Waimea United Church of Christ

Luke 16:19-31“Even If Someone Rises from the Dead!”

I was at
the beach one day and struck up a conversation with a man. He had two children
who were going out into the water with him. They were a little close to a rip,
so I mentioned that they might want to move over to the right a little, so they
would not be sucked out. The conversation went on from there. I asked him where
he worked. He said he worked at Amazon. I asked him if he liked it. He said he
did.

Fast
forward to the evening dinner hour. My wife always asks about the people I
bother wherever I go.I do tend to talk
to strangers a lot. Well, anyway, I mentioned this man on the beach who worked
for Amazon, had two kids and the like. Just then, my daughter Kim whipped out
her cell phone, punched a few keys, and then showed me a picture on the screen.
I looked at it. She asked me, “Is that the guy?” I looked at it and affirmed
that it did seem to be the man I spoke with on the beach.

My daughter
rolled her eyes a little at me. “That man is Jeff Bezos. He owns Amazon!” I
checked recently to find out that he is worth $162 billion. Just the same he
still just hangs out in board shorts with his kids at the beach on Kauai! And,
you never know whom you are going to meet at the beach.

I mention
all this because our scripture starts with a man who wanted to make sure that
everyone knew that he was the rich guy. He is not hanging around in board
shorts in public. He sits in a great house wearing royal colors (although Jesus
refrains from saying that he is actually royalty). He is the kind of a guy who
wants to rub our noses in his good fortune. In the first mention of him we
already do not like him.

Funny
thing, we never even learn his name, that is because he is not important, likes
he thinks he is. The important one in this story is Lazarus, whose name we
learn right off.

The other
thing that we might not quite get right away when we read this is the point
that Jesus makes that this rich man is feasting everyday. We just are not fixed
to the Jewish calendar year as the people who first heard this told by Luke
were. You see, in the Jewish year there are two major days of fasting, and four
minor ones. This man is said to be feasting everyday! Jesus is implying that he
is feasting on Yom Kippur (The day of atonement) when he should be fasting.
This makes him a non-observant Jew. He has already forsaken his own faith. He
is only concerned with his continuous feasting. (As a side note, there are five
major feasts in the Jewish year, too.)

Lazarus is
at this man’s gate. Why? We seem to think he is there because he hopes to get a
few scraps from the table. Why not go to another man’s house? Perhaps he could
go to a man’s house that was more observant of the Jewish faith. You see, in
Judaism one is mandated to help feed the hungry. The Talmud even proscribes
that every Jewish community set up a special fund to help feed the needy.
Isaiah 58:6-7 “Is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of
injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to
break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the
homeless poor into you house . . . ?” To participate in the religious fast in
the Jewish tradition means to invite the hungry to eat what you would otherwise
consume yourself!

No, Lazarus
is there for another reason. We see that later in the scripture that the rich
man calls out from hell for his Lazarus to serve him a bit of water. Lazarus
must have been a servant to this man! We see that there was a relationship
between the two. Yet, when Lazarus became ill with sores all over his body, he
was kicked out of the rich man’s house. That is why he is there. The dogs are
licking his wounds, which is more than his own old master would do to heal him.
That is Jesus saying that the rich man is lower than a dog!

The story
continues with both men suddenly dying. End of story, right? This is the wonder
of Christianity, isn’t it! Without the faith, the story would end right there.
Thank you, Jesus, the story continues on!That is the good news that Jesus came from heaven to share with us. I
mean, this scripture is a great social justice scripture about the need to feed
those in need. Yet, right in the middle of this social justice story is the
very promise of life eternal with God. Isn’t that amazing how those two ideas
fit together! Because we have faith in the life everlasting, we have got to get
this life here on this planet to be righteous and good—because we never know when
our time is up.

So, this
other thing about Christianity is that we get to see dead people. . . .just
like that movie “I see dead people.” I still wonder about those days when Jesus
appeared back to his disciples--especially to the women at the tomb on Easter
morning. How would it have been to see Jesus alive again!?

Let me
share with you what happened one day when I appeared to my family after being
dead—well, so to speak. In the year 1981, I took the train from the Mexican
border with California all the way down to Mexico City. I had been living in
Germany before that, and I was maybe naïve to believe that the train to Mexico
City would be a similar experience to the European trains.

I bought a
first class ticket, which meant that I had a padded bench seat in a wooden
carriage that did not even have glass in the windows. The Pemex diesel smoke
wafted through the windows all the way. That meant that although I might be the
only “gabacho” (white guy) on the train, nobody could tell because I was
covered with soot like everyone else.

Somewhere
around the town of Tequila (that is a real place where the agave cactus comes
from for making the drink), two men jumped on the slow-moving train carrying
long rifles. I assumed that I was about to be robbed, taken hostage, or killed
outright. No. As I heard from the nice family of Peruvians who were seated
across from me, these men were the Federales, the national police force
that were on board now because THE TRAIN BEFORE OURS had been robbed. I really
did not feel any better at that point! (As an aside, a town south of Mexico
City reported an amazing 526 train robberies last year.)

Well, I
thought I was dead, but I was not. I made it to Mexico City, stopping first in
Guadalajara. But, then when I was there, I learned that the Sonora-Baja Railway
went on strike, so that I could not take the train home. Later I learned that
the reason the workers went on strike was that the train behind mine had jumped
the rails on a bridge, landing in a ravine, and killing most people on board.
Yet, I was still alive.

I decided
that I would fly home to Los Angeles and called my parents to let them know
that I was safe and would take the safer option back home. After visiting
museums and climbing pyramids, I got out to the airport and boarded the flight
on Mexicana de Aviation airways. We took off. Not long thereafter, about
twenty minutes only, the prerecorded announcement came over the loudspeakers
“Please prepare for landing at Los Angeles International Airport.” Impossible.

The
hydraulics on the plane had gone out. We were making an emergency landing in
Guadalajara, at night, at a closed airport, without radar, in the middle of
torrential rainstorm. Again, I am here to tell this story! Everyone onboard
survived, but the plane was too damaged, and they had to bring in another
aircraft to take us to LA. Some people were in fact hospitalized and would not
continue at that time. It took the airlines two days to bring in another jet.
We lived at the airport in Guadalajara for that time.

My mother
and father had driven out to Los Angeles airport to pick me up. All they got
from the airlines was that the plane had crash landed. They left their phone
number to be called when more was known. They never got called about anything.
I was not able to call them from Guadalara as the lines on the phones were
always too long. Finally, I made it back to LA. I got a ride from another
passenger on that flight who lived close to our home in La Habra. So, I simply
walk in the door. I was met with surprise, anger, disbelief, and tears of joy.
My mother said: “We thought you were dead.” My mother had already prepared her
heart for that. What a shock to see me alive, standing before her.

“Therefore,
but by the grace of God go I.” These words were uttered by the evangelical
preacher William Bradford in 1555. For some reason we always stop the full
quote from him. He was burned at the stake as being an apostate of the official
church. The second part of the saying is, ”We shall dine with the Lord tonight.”

Jesus’
story of the rich man and Lazarus is a shrewd affirmation hidden in a social
justice message that we will all see each other in the after life! This stuff
we call life does not end here. The real question is will we be like the rich
man looking up at his servant who is up in heaven as we languish in hell?

The rich
man begs God to send Lazarus back to warn my family of this. Let someone who
has experienced the grace of God to tell this story. How many times I should
have died inmy own life? It is a
litany of stories I could tell all day. But for the grace of God am I, are WE,
here today. Do you have the faith to accept this grace? Then, we shall feast
with the Lord together one day.

Reach out
to those in need. Feed the hungry. Help the sick. This is also the grace of
God. One day we shall all sit at the feast together then. Jesus has gone before
to prepare that feast for us. He is risen from the dead. Hear what he has to
say.